#ryougo narita

[eiichiro]

FATE/STRANGE FAKE -WHISPERS OF DAWN- (2023) • GILGAMESH written by narita ryougo

[arrancxr]

Favorite bleach novel? If not, have you considered reading one of them?

If you mean the Ryougo Narita ones, I have not read them yet! Mostly due to there not being translations available around the time I'd learned of their existence. >3>

I am however absolutely obsessed with the concept of Cien. And Szayel's human backstory, mostly because of the implications that Bleach might?? also??? take place in the Baccano/Durara setting. That's just hilarious to me.

[bungoustraypups]

i want to ramble about ship Things from my BSD next gen canon-divergent universe, bungou stray pups-verse, but i can't decide what to ship ramble about first without being entirely predictable so i'm letting you guys choose!

send me an ask with one or more ships from the list below, OR with one or more numbers 1 - 34 (if you wanna be random about it) and i'll answer it with a handful of bullet points of trivia about them and the family they end up having! if a ship gets sent more than once, that's fine, i'll just use different trivia points each time (trust me there's a lot lmao)

Atsushi Nakajima/Ryuunosuke Akutagawa (Beast Beneath the Moonlight & Rashoumon)

Doppo Kunikida/Katai Tayama (The Matchless Poet & Futon)

Chuuya Nakahara/Osamu Dazai (Upon the Tainted Sorrow & No Longer Human)

Kyouka Izumi/Kenji Miyazawa/Q Kyuusaku Yumeno (Demon Snow, Undefeated by the Rain & Dogra Magra)

Ranpo Edogawa/Edgar Allan Poe (Super Deduction & Black Cat in the Rue Morgue)

Akiko Yosano/Kouyou Ozaki/Kirako Haruno (Thou Shalt Not Die & Golden Demon)

Junichirou Tanizaki/Michizou Tachihara (Light Snow & Midwinter Memento)

Motojirou Kajii/Shoufu Muramatsu [OC] (Lemonade & Demon City)

Yukichi Fukuzawa/Ougai Mori (All Men Are Equal & Vita Sexualis)

Sakunosuke Oda/Ango Sakaguchi (Flawless & Discourse on Decadence)

Gin Akutagawa/Ichiyou Higuchi (No abilities)

Naomi Tanizaki/Charlotte Lennox [OC] (Adventures of Arabella)

Arthur Rimbaud/Paul Verlaine (Illuminations & The Spiritual Hunt)

Flags Polycule (All 5 of the Flags)

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald/Zelda Fitzgerald (The Great Fitzgerald)

John Steinbeck/Howard Phillips Lovecraft (The Grapes of Wrath & Great Old One)

Nathaniel Hawthorne/Margaret Mitchell (The Scarlet Letter & Gone with the Wind)

Mark Twain/Lucy Maud Montgomery (Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer & Anne of Abyssal Red)

Louisa May Alcott/Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings [OC]/William Howard Armstrong [OC] (Little Women, The Yearling, & Sounder)

Fyodor Dostoevsky/Ivan Goncharov (Crime and Punishment & The Precipice)

Sigma/Nikolai Gogol (The Overcoat)

Mushitarou Oguri/Yokomizo(†) (The Perfect Crime)

Saigiku Jouno/Tecchou Suehiro (Priceless Tears & Plum Blossoms in Snow)

Teruko Okura/Adalcinda Magno Camarão Luxardo (AKA Meursault Catgirl) (Gasp of the Soul & Clairvoyants)

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa/Bram Stoker (Draconia/Dracula)

André Gide/Jean-Jacques Rousseau [OC] (Strait is the Gate & Julie)

Ryuurou Hirotsu/Herman Melville (Falling Camellia & Moby Dick)

Agatha Christie/Yuan (And Then There Were None)

Adam Frankenstein/Shirase (No abilities)

Ace/Junji Ito [OC] (The Madness of the Jewel King & Black Paradox)

Karma/Ryougo Narita [OC] (Baccano!)

Langston Hughes [OC]/E.E. Cummings [OC] (I Too & i carry your heart with me)

Soseki Natsume/James Baldwin [OC] (I am a cat & Giovanni's Room)

Santoka Taneda/Seisensui (Tokichi) Ogiwara [OC] (Hail in the Begging Bowl & Choryu)

[aspiring-holistic-otaku]

Ramble#12 - Delinquency

This month's episode is on delinquent manga, a pretty dope but unfortunately pretty dead genre. That may just be my underexposure speaking but it seems to me that the delinquent pipeline seems to get dryer and dryer every year.

I was hoping to find a bunch of new rad delinquent manga this month but honestly it was a pretty weak month for reads but nonetheless let's get into it

top 5 delinquent manga read this month:

#5) Wolf Guy: Ookami no Monshou by Tabata Yoshiaki (complete with 117 chapters, I only got 56)

Just gotta say right off the bat, even though I haven't finished either wolf guy or akumetsu by the same author I very much prefer akumetsu [spoken on before in ramble#4, Mystery, Madness & Mayhem]

Regardless the premise here in wolf guy, is basically that there's this guy that turns into something wolf like (yes a werewolf) and how his nature seems to attract bad news

My main problem with the series is how much they ask you to suspend your belief as the students are in middle school and are closer to terrorism than delinquency, it gets very very wild, a little too wild for me, fairly solid art but I would warn folks to approach with major caution if they decide to pick this up

#4) OUT by tatsuya iguchi (ongoing with 206 English chapters)

Basically the story here is a dude just got out of juvie and has to avoid trouble so he moves out of town to the sticks, and if that had played out well for him there'd be no story here. So ofc one of the first things that happens is him getting into a fight with the VP of the top gang in the area.

Luckily delinquents tend to respect guts and nobody else was around so that played out well enough for him except now he's wrapped up in the arguments of the local gangs who are on the brink of war.

My main problem with OUT is that the camaraderie usually present in delinquent manga is almost non-existent here, no vibes, just violence. I will say it's got pretty decent art, and a number of pretty neat spreads.

#3) Bakuon Rettou by Tsutomu Takahashi (complete with 105 chapters, I read 46)

Basically this one dude just didn't like boredom or the normal life or something so he got involved in a biker gang as if extracurricular activities didn't exist or something.

We follow this guy through his outward and internal changes as he gets deeper and deeper into the gang.

I was really excited to get to this because of the author but I was pretty disappointed in the end, maybe because I only got halfway but at least they had the same old beautiful art I had expected.

#2) Tokyo Revengers by Ken Wakui (complete with 279 chapters + an anime)

Fairly popular so you may have heard of it, the story goes that the main character goes back in time to save his crush by joining the gang that kills her in the future, with the goal of becoming their leader so he can prevent his crush's death.

not gonna lie I really dug it in the beginning, the premise was a two punch combo of things I loved, I mean time travel + delinquency? In any case idk my love for it just petered out, then the ending was a bit wack, crazy style on almost every character tho.

#1) Durarara!! story by Ryougo Narita and art by Akiyo Satorigi

Best thing I read this month, a bit surprised since I'd already watched the anime way back when but it was still super great.

The story is that a young lad named mikado ryuugamine moves to the big city of ikebukuro for high school in an attempt to shake off his normal day to day life. He meets up with his childhood best friend masaomi kida who shows him around town and gives him all the details of strange tales, urban myths and living legends.

The story is broken up into durarara, durarara saika arc, durarara yellow scarves arc & durarara re; dollars each about 20 - 30 chapters long

top 5 delinquent manga read ever: (I go off cuff for these so no transcript, but dude trust me)

#5) Kyou kara ore wa!! by Hiroyuki Nishimori (366 chapters)

#4) Beelzebub by Ryuuhei Tamura (252 chapters)

#3) Holyland by Kouji Mori (182 chapters)

#2) Rookies by Morita masanori (233 chapters)

#1) Clover by Tetsuhiro Hirakawa (401 chapters)

honourable mention: great teacher onizuka gto

thanks for listening, if you'd like to see specific scores my anilist is in the link above and additionally there's a small off cuff part 2 in the episode where I talk a little bit more about what I like about the delinquent genre

[choujinx]

VAMP! (2004-2010) by narita ryougo & enami katsumi

[kscosplaycatalog]

No. 12 - 2012

Character: Heiwajima Kasuka Series: Durarara!! by Narita Ryougo

==========

I pulled this together for my brother; since he'd did Netherlands for me, I did Kasuka for him. This is the widely popular Shizuo's younger brother. I think I only wore this costume, like, twice. 😂

==========

The wig is actually my Ritsuka wig, minus the ears. I already owned the proper shirt and I wore my dress shoes from my Haruhi costume. The necklace is just a strip of white leather similar to what I use for Yuuen's accessories. I bought the pants off Amazon. The coat and white cardigan are borrowed.

==========

Cost: $22 Time: 1 hr

[plasterbender]

Dead Mount Death Play -  デッドマウント・デスプレイ  Volume 1

[jinjojess]

Just ignoring DR IF for a sec, what's your opinion of Ryougo Narita's writing style? I've heard of some who adore Baccano and Durarara for their character complexity while others loathe them for some of those characters being way too powerful.

I enjoy it, actually. It’s been awhile since I read any of his novels or manga, but I generally felt like the really powerful characters still had flaws that kept them in check (say, an emotional weakness or whatever) so I never had too much of a problem with it?

Since I haven’t actually read his prose in quite some time, I can’t really comment about the more technical aspects of his writing, but I don’t remember it being bad by any means.

[maleyanderecafe]

Kuroha to Nijisuke: Kuroki Majo no Divertimento (Manga)

Created by: Narita ryougo/Shiraume nazuna

Genre: Supernatural/Action

Cherry actually recommended this manga to me, and holy is it good. There's actually two parts to this manga, with Kuroha & Nijisuke, being a short prologue of this manga. The yandere and the male lead vaguely remind me of The Banished Villainess since they have the same qualities (both yanderes are "graceful", have a similar hairstyle and are of a sort of high status, where the two male leads are more rugged looking, strong and are very shy around the female lead), but the stories are very different from each other. This is one of those where I would read it for the story, and have the yandere as a bonus.

The story is about the two characters Kuroha and Nijisuke and their strange relationship with unluckiness and luckiness. Kuroha was born with extreme good luck, with the cost of having a monkey's paw effect -causing pain, suffering and bad luck to those around her, so much so that's she's dubbed a witch. Nijsuke on the other hand is the complete opposite. He's so unlucky as the universe wants him to die, but he's so strong that he's able to survive pretty much anything, from toxic smog to an entire truck ramming straight into him. He doesn't believe in luck whatsoever and believes that fate is in his own hands. Kuroha has the ability to see and converse with Shinigami, who deal with the dead souls of this town and are trying to take Nijusuke's soul and failing badly. It seems like Kuroha and Nijisuke's luck is causing a lot of the town to die, which leads to the Shinigami having more work to do. Kuroha is targeted by a medical group attempting to capture her and use her blood as a poison, and they hire the three Mitsugane sisters: Ai, the oldest and the one with the most experience in using science to get rid of body, Momo, the gyaru assassin and the youngest Midori, a huge and strong girl with a pure heart to get her. Meanwhile, the yandere, Kujinawa and his friend Benshima are trying to find a way to get rid of Nijusuke while protecting Kuroha. Kujinawa is able to see part of the Shinigami, meaning unlike Kuroha who seems them in their human form, he seems them in an abstract shape. All he knows is that when the shinigami are near someone, they die, and as a result of them being near Kuroha, he tries really hard to protect her using Benshima's help.Meanwhile, there are two killers, Kikuri, who is obsessed with the "art" of killing using the bodies to make morbid masterpieces and Shigari, a person who similar to Kujinawa can see the forms of Shinigamis and worships them through killing, believing that he is sacrificing to the Shinigami.

The story plot itself is really revolved around the pushing and pulling of the main two characters, Nujisuke and Kuroha, with different parties either wanting one dead or trying to use one's power. The dynamic of having a "lucky" person and an "unlucky" person is used to good effect in this story and a lot of the characters that are fighting for the two are connected with each other in one way or another. It can get a little convoluted since characters are introduced relatively fast, but its definitely a fun ride. It gets pretty bloody at times, which is surprising, but it makes sense as the entire story is about life and death, luck and unluckiness. Personally, I really do like all of the characters in the story as they all of their own motivations of doing what they're doing, from the CEO trying to gain Kuroha's blood to gain more poison, to the sisters working together to stay alive and even the two serial killers have reasons for killing. I think a lot of the characters are "unfortunate" in their own right, having had to deal with the situation that surrounds both Nujisuke and Kuroha and have to find different ways around the two just to get to where they need to be. It's really cool seeing how parts of the characters are connected to each other and the twist at the end was fun too, as there were hints to it initially. Both Nujisuke and Kuroha are great characters as well, with Nujisuke powering through the unlucky events through sheer willpower while also making his own fate, and Kuroha being cursed with her "good luck" and trying to live a better life with those around her. My favorite characters are probably the three sisters since they have a strong bond with each other and eventually even befriend Kuroha and Nujisuke. I like the tone of the story, having a good message while also having funny bits and action sprinkled in.

As for the yandere, Kujinawa, he doesn't really affect the story as much as other characters, at least, not in my eyes. The reason he liked Kuroha in the first place was that after he was able to see Shinigami, he fell into a sort of despair before seeing Kuroha being used by the Yakuza to gain money, he believed that the two were destined to fall together. For the most part in the story, he's responsible for saving/protecting Kuroha and the three girls from Shinigami, though he's also mistaken since Kuroha is extremely unlikely to die because of her good luck. The only major things he's really done are to save the girls from being killed by the serial killers and get them together in the building. Other than that, I do wish he had a more important role in the story, though it is noted that the story seems a bit rushed at the end, so it's possible that originally he was going to have more of a role, but he was sidelined so that the story could be finished. A pity considering he actually doesn't interact with Kuroha at all despite the fact that he's so in love with her. I wish the two had at least a moment together so we could see their interactions.

Still, though, I would highly recommend this manga if you like action, humor, and cute romance with tones of death. I really liked it, so thanks Cherry for recommending it to me!

[eiichiro]

— please, i beg of you, professor el-melloi— no, the greatest instructor in all of the clock tower... great big ben london star! — to hell with that ridiculous nickname! not only you are an idiotic moron, you're absolutely impudent!

FATE/STRANGE FAKE -WHISPERS OF DAWN- (2023) written by narita ryougo

[animebw]

Short Reflection: Durarara

Durarara’s a show I’ve been excited to check out for a while now. It’s based on a light novel series from the same author as Baccano, and Baccano is one of the most deliriously entertaining shows I’ve ever watched. From its impeccably eccentric cast of characters to its hypnotically twisting plot, Baccano knows how to kick ass and take names like few other anime. And Durarara doesn’t just share Baccano’s author; the same studio and director that brought Baccano to animated life- Brain’s Base and Takahiro Oomori- were also behind its anime production. Surely, with all the same creatives in charge, Durarara would be just as much a rip-roaring good time as its spiritual predecessor, right? Well... no, sadly, it’s not. Not even close, in fact. And while it would be unfair to simply define Durarara as a worse Baccano- it’s its own show, it deserves to stand on its own- the many ways it disappointed me can’t help but draw comparison to its sister series. How could Baccano succeed so brilliantly while Durarara, which shares so much of its DNA, fall so short?

First, though, what’s Durarara all about? Well, that’s a little hard to pin down. It’s not so much a story as it is a portrait of a location, a hyper-stylized Ikebukuro full of street gangs, quirky vendors, transient guests, and supernatural forces lurking just under the surface. Think Kekkai Sensen if the POV characters lingered on the outskirts of the city’s paranormal underbelly instead of diving right into the thick of it, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what you’re in for. The nominal protagonist is Mikado Ryugamine, a teenage boy who’s just moved to Ikebukuro to attend high school there and reconnect with his childhood friend Masaomi Kida. But much like Baccano, this is a show where most characters could reasonably describe themselves as the protagonist without it sounding forced. And while there’s some semblance of a larger plot, it’s nowhere near the tightly engineered swiss watch of narrative machinery that defined Baccano. It’s a tale of the various people living in Ikebukuro and all the ways their lives tangle around each other, not so much driving relentlessly toward a single destination as wandering down the streets and back alleys, seeing what ‘s there to be discovered around every corner.

In other words, Durarara is almost entirely driven by its characters. And credit where it’s due, this is where the show is at its strongest. Author Ryougo Narita is nothing if not a master at juggling large casts of eccentric, interconnected players with diverse agendas and perspectives on life. From the grumpy, violence-prone superman Shizuo Heiwajima to the pacifist Afro-Russian sushi hawker SImon Brezhnev, from the slippery, snakelike information dealer Izaya Orihara to the mysteries headless rider who patrols the city on motorbike, the world of Durarara is chock-full of entertaining personalities who clash and collide in countless enjoyable ways. It also helps that these characters are brought to life by a murderer’s row of the most iconic voice actors in the industry. Hiroshi Kamiya, Daisuke Ono, Mamoru Miyano, Kana Hanazawa, Miyuki Sawashiro, Jun Fukuyama, Yuki Kaji, Yuuichi Nakamura, Keiji Fujiwara, Ayahi Takagaki... barely a scene goes by without at least two legendary seiyuus flexing their talents in conversation with each other. It’s hard not to have fun when you’re surrounded by that much talent.

So if Durarara does such a good job capturing Baccano’s interlocking cast dynamics, why does it stumble so hard? Why did I feel my interest, initially so high, slowly slipping away with each passing episode? Well, there are a few major issues, none of which would be a dealbreaker on their own, but they all compound on each other to disastrous effect.

First, and most obviously: the lack of plot. Baccano’s plot was tighter than an oyster in a corset, always driving relentlessly forward even as it jumped and and forth across time. As I mentioned above, though, Durarara doesn’t really have much of a plot. It has individual arcs, sure, and things do happen, but you never get a sense that they’re building to anything more meaningful than “Well, that was interesting.” Even when the final arc tries to deliver something resembling closure for the characters, it never feels any less like just one detour among many. Sure, not all stories really need to have a strong structure, but there’s something so frustrating about how aimless this show can be. how it drifts between disconnected story threads and random urban fantasy Macguffins that never coalesce into a greater whole. It feels very much like Narita wrote this story solely to indulge in the characters’ dynamics, and what little plot we get is hastily cobbled together as an excuse to give those character dynamics a space to exist in. And I sympathize; that approach is how I started writing the webcomic I’m currently publishing. But at some point, you do have to make the plot more than an excuse.

Of course, a lackluster plot can be forgiven as long as those characters are strong enough to carry it. Which brings me to the second issue: the character arcs.

See, one of the most fascinating things about Baccano is that very few of its characters actually have arcs, per se. They show up as fully formed people, with their own well-established goals and philosophies, and the fun comes from watching all those perspectives and personalities bounce off each other. Very few of them change or grow as a result of their experience on the train, but it doesn’t matter because the push and pull between so many extreme, confident chess pieces is all the drama you really need. Durarara, in contrast, leans much harder on traditional character arcs... and they’re just not that good. People rarely change in ways that feel earned; it’s like the story decides at random when they’re able to grow from their experiences. The biggest offenders here are Mikado, Kida, and their female friend Anri, who form a classic YA Power Trio at the heart of the show. Everything about their growth and conflict feels so underbaked, especially when it saddles them all with the same goddamn twist backstory. Seriously, all three of these kids have a twist backstory and they all essentially boil down to the same exact reveal. It was cool the first time, but after the third time, it just comes off as overly convenient writing.

And then there’s the third issue, one that’s a little harder to describe. The simplest way to put it is that Durarara has a lot of romantic subplots, and they almost uniformly suck. But that doesn’t quite capture the problem clearly. It’s not just bad in the way that you’d expect a bad romantic subplot to be; it’s more like this show’s perspective on love itself is so unnatural that it infects every attempt it makes to tell a love story. Remember that dumb subplot from the Baccano OVAs where Chaine Laforet falls for the weirdo who stalks her and basically tries to smother her with his affections? Well, the same kind of thing happens here, except the characters hang around as a couple once they make it official so you’re forced to marinate in how awkward their relationship feels. The climax of the first big arc also seems to suggest that stalking for love is romantic (though amusingly, the show is equally forgiving of male and female stalkers alike). Another subplot revolves around a teacher who tries to sleep with his students, and it’s presented as uncomfortably as it should be, but then it completely changes course and goes “Syke! Actually, the bad guy here is a student he seduced who turned into a crazy jealous yandere bitch!” And it all comes wrapped up in this weird slut-shaming about Anri being a parasite who relies on strong men to protect her because she’s too weak to protect herself, and it’s like, what the fuck are you even trying to say here? Why is this show’s perception of love so fucking warped? I don’t demand perfect healthy relationship dynamics from the media I consume, but every time Durarara touches on lust or romance, it just comes off gross and wrong and disconnected from reality. And when so many of its subplots have romance as a central component, it very quickly crosses from annoying to exhausting.

Is Durarara fun? Ultimately, I’d say yes; the characters and their interactions are so entertaining on a base level that it would be hard to ruin them. But ae those fun interactions worth sitting through so much aimless, uncomfortable nonsense? That, I’m less certain of. If Baccano was an explosive fireworks shower of fun, Durarara is a bargain-bin box of summer sparklers set off in a muggy rainstorm, struggling to stay alight. Whether you compare it to Baccano or let it stand on its own terms, it’s a distressingly flawed show. Hopefully future seasons will improve on these flaws and bring Durarara to the heights it has the potential to reach. Until then, though, I give this first season a score of:

5/10

Oh, I almost forgot: Isaac and Miria have a cameo and it’s the best thing ever. God bless these incredible dumbasses.

[bungoustraypups]

Hmmmm could you start by telling what the bungou stray pups-verse is about?

Also you mentioned a wild west + mystery AU with the Tanizaki siblings and a Karma + OC focused underworld AU? Those sound really interesting

Also I have to know, if alphaverse is not omegaverse related then what is it?

so i wrote up a post on bungou stray pups over here!

the wild west + mystery AU and the underworld AU both do have plots! i'll toss em here under the cut

alphaverse is just the code name for another next gen verse i have ahaha, it's got slightly different ships from bspverse

Nowhere in the West

Wild West + Mystery AU

(or, how a pair of teenagers and another pair of middle-aged men accidentally made a family & solved some crimes) When their abusive parents unexpectedly die in a freak car accident, Junichirou and Naomi Tanizaki are faced with a terrifying decision: face the foster care system alone, or move out to the American West with an eccentric Uncle (Soseki Baldwin-Natsume) they never knew they had and his (less eccentric but still fairly unknown) husband (James Baldwin-Natsume). For them, the initial choice is easy, as they could never live without each other or within the foster care system, but life out in the middle of nowhere isn't all it's cracked up to be… at first. They'll soon come to realize that the little town of Nowhere, Nevada is more than meets the eye when they arrive there, and are greeted by the rag-tag group of volunteer detectives their uncles have brought together to solve a great crime which occurred several decades prior. Taming the Wild, Wild West has never run more in the family than it does in this story.

The Underground Diamond in the Rough

Underworld AU

After meeting a mysterious young man his age who promises to give him a life beyond his wildest dreams, 18-year-old previously-homeless orphan Karma finds himself strung along in a series of wild adventures with Ryougo Narita - the aforementioned young man - in a hidden world beneath the surface of the earth known as the Underground. Karma soon comes to learn that Ryougo has been tasked with finding a person called "the Diamond in the Rough" for the King of the Underground, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, and that Ryougo believes Karma is that person… however, he can't tell him what it is the King seeks him so desperately for, as no one knows. Unfortunately, the King isn't the only person seeking Karma, and after a few narrowly-avoided attempts on his life, Ryougo teams up with a handful of his friends and associates to keep Karma safe for the journey to the King's Palace. This definitely isn't how Karma expected to be adopted into a family, but… maybe it isn't so bad.

[kaibutsushidousha]

Hello complete stranger who I've never spoken with in my life, can you do another one of your posts on the translation of Gojo Satoru's name? If there's any secial meaning to it?

Hello, amnesiac Link. I recommend checking our chat log to fill the gaps in your memory. Anyways, about Gojou-sensei. This is not nearly as great as Mahito, but there are some Buddhist motifs to his name.

His given name is, in my humble opinion, one of the funniest words in the Japanese language. Satoru was originally the Buddhist verb for attaining enlightenment. It means to get rid of all your doubts and all your polluting thoughts (greed, hatred, delusion, etc), and grasp an eternal truth greater than the cycle of reincarnation we live and die in.

Nowadays the word still very much retains its original Buddhist meanings, but more commonly used outside of Buddhist contexts, as the verb for having a huge epiphany in a silly or dramatic context. When you remember you left meat off the fridge and realize it’ll get bad before you get back home, you use satoru for that. When you think back to a recent conversation and realize you accidentally said something offensive there, you use satoru for that. When you read a meta that makes you completely reinterpret a story, you use satoru for that. When you realize the match you’re playing is already unwinnable, you use satoru for that. When you suddenly figure out the culprit on that mystery you’re reading, you use satoru for that. When your boss calls for a talk and you immediately know you’ll be fired, you use satoru for that. It’s almost a meme word nowadays. 

Satoru Gojou is a man who think the curser community is shit, and as an anime-only, I don’t know what exactly lead him to this mindset, but I can confidently bet he had as scene where he realizes he needs to hit his metaphoric reset button, because that classic kind of scene where “satoru” is used in narrations. (Side note: Ryougo Narita is one author who loves using this word for moments of dramatic shift in a character’s motivation)

Now, his family name, Gojou, as it’s written (五条) simply means “five paragraphs”. It’s the name of a city in Nara. The biggest source of wood in the Yoshino River area, and the city where the Tenchuugumi Rebellion happened in 1863. I’m not sure if that’s anyy relevant. What I do find relevant is that there a few Buddhist and Confucian words also pronounced as “gojou”. They are: 

五情: The five emotions in Buddhism. Joy, anger, grief, comfort, and desire; or in other versions,  joy, anger, grief, comfort and hatred.

Also 五情: The five senses (in Buddhist contexts), and the emotions they provoke. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

五常: The five Confuncian virtues. Sometimes called “the five constants” because they’re considered the virtues you can never lack. Benevolence, justice, politeness, wisdom, and fidelity. This is the one that shows up in the lyrics to the anime’s opening.

五乗: The five stages in the climb to enlightenment. Human, deva (being with divine powers), sravaka (disciples who’re already solely dedicated to their quest for enlightenment and nothing else), pratyekabuddha (beings who are no longer dependent of Buddha’s teachings to figure out the logic behind the laws of the universe), and bodhisattsva (beings who can already become buddhas but decide not to in order to help as many people as they can before they leave the cycle of reincarnation). This is the one that ties back to Satoru’s given name.

I actually don’t have a fifth list of five to comment about here, but I’m adding an extra bullet point here so I have a list of five paragraphs after these five paragraphs of basic text about Mr. Five Paragraphs’ name. I’m really sorry about the useless block of text, but presentation matters.

[morganwriteblr]

[RTSMS] Intro//Summary

I’ve put everything below the ‘keep reading’ line in case there’s anyone who doesn’t want to see it! My Inbox is alway open for comments/queries/questions/ramblings and rants. Quick reminder that all of this has been previously posted to my Ao3!

               Return to Seireitei, Mysterious Shinigami!   

Summary:            

April, 2006. Three years ago, Seireitei defeated the Invading Quincy army led by Yhwach. One month ago, everyone celebrated the marital union of Kuchiki Rukia and Abarai Renji. Somewhere high in the mountains of Soul Society, powerful kidou barriers finally break. This is the story of the 'mysterious shinigami' who emerges from that cave in the mountains.

Notes:    

The events of this story take place following the Thousand Year Blood War arc.

This is a novel based on Kubo Taito’s Bleach universe, and will use facts, plot lines and information gathered from the manga serialisation. No mention will be made to the anime ‘filler’ arcs, such as the Bount arc, and the Zanpakutou materialisation storyline.

Whilst every effort has been made to reflect the events presented in the light novels, (authored by Narita Ryougo and Matsubara Makoto) set during the ten year period between the final manga arc and the epilogue, there may be some continuity errors.

Names and vocabulary will be presented as close to the original Japanese as possible: Shinigami, not soul reaper. Zanpakutou, not soul slayer. The same goes for character names: Kurosaki Ichigo, not Ichigo Kurosaki.

Additionally, some words and phrases just make more sense/look better when left in Japanese, so these will be shown in italicised romaji.

This novel/story/fiction contains violence, nudity, and sex. You have been warned.

[durararazine]

Introducing SkootleSkittle: Illustrator !! “ Hello! I'm Skootle but almost everyone calls me Skoot! Durarara!! and Narita Ryougo’s works in general hold a very special place in my heart and Shinra is my favorite male character of all time, so I’m glad to be able to participate in this zine! “ @skootleskittle | Instagram | Twitter

@ZINEHOLICS @ZINE-SCENE @ZINEAPPS @ZINEFEED @FANDOMZINES @ZINEFANS @ZINESUBMISSIONS 

[incorrectbananafish]

Narita Ryougo is such a legend!! I own a lot of his light novels and I'm so glad you like his works too! Drrr is one of my favorite anime, who are your favs? Shinra is best boy in my heart 💕

OMG WHAAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO GET MY HANDS ON THE DRRR 3RD LIGHT NOVEL FOR LIKE YEARS NOW but I’m too broke :’) 

I’m such an obvious basic bitch but I love Izaya and Shizuo LJDFSKFK also Celty is my Queen